# $Id: README,v 1.4.2.1 2003/03/06 11:08:02 daveewart Exp $

INTRODUCTION

colordiff is a wrapper for 'diff' and produces the same output as diff
but with coloured syntax highlighting at the command line to improve
readability.  The output is similar to how a diff-generated patch might
appear in Vim or Emacs with the appropriate syntax highlighting options
enabled.  The colours schemes can be read from a central configuration
file or from a local user ~/.colordiffrc file.

SCOPE

colordiff makes use of ANSI colours and as such will only work when ANSI
colours can be used - typical examples are xterms and Eterms, as well as
console sessions.

colordiff has been tested on various flavours of Linux, but should be
broadly portable to other systems.

USAGE

Use 'colordiff' whereever you would normally use 'diff', or pipe output
to 'colordiff':

e.g.

    colordiff file1 file2
    cvs diff -u file1 | colordiff

You may find it useful to make 'diff' automatically call 'colordiff'.
Add the following line to ~/.bashrc (or equivalent):

    alias diff=colordiff

Any options passed to colordiff are passed through to diff.

FEEDBACK

Bug reports and suggestions/patches to davee@sungate.co.uk please.

THANKS

Thanks to Matthew Gatto <mg2300@albany.edu> for submitting patch to fix
colour overrun when using a prompt with no colours, and for contributing
code to highlight 'context' diffs.

# vim: tw=72
